Their play this year was fairly even, and we saw how the Minnesota Mild teams did OK by switching between Dwayne Roloson and Manny Fernandez. When you have two relatively equal goalies, you should always explore the option of going with the ‘hot hand’.

Now, Detroit Red Wings fans are having to eat their own cockiness (The bloggers aren’t bad...I’m talking about your typical Message Board fanboys) as they found their team beaten by the upstart Oilers. As one blogger mentioned (I’m sorry, but I forgot who it was), the Red Wings fans are ‘eating their own’ as they dissect just what went wrong.

Well, how about an outsider’s perspective?

If you really want to throw blame around...

Manny Legace – I feel sorry for the guy, because you know he’s going to get way more blame than he deserves. Still, a 2.64GAA and 88.4SV% certainly won’t cut it for a team with big aspirations, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Wings decide to make a change in goal.

One thing I noticed was how deflated Legace looked after Fernando Pisani (Fernando PISANI!??!) scored each of his two third period goals. Had he lost confidence in himself? Judging by his post-game comments, the d00d is in a world of self-immolation:

"I feel like going home and hanging myself. To have such a great year and then such a disappointing last two weeks. And you're out. You're golfing. It's hard to take."

Andreas Lilja – His third period gaffe led to a wide open Ales Hemsky burying a silky-smooth feed from Sergei Samsonov and giving the Oilers the series win. Overall, Lilja had a team-worst -4 (tied with Nicklas Lidstrom) and 0 points. Lilja is a fringe defenseman at best, and not the type of player you should have as a regular option on a #1 team.

Nicklas Lidstrom – Blame Lilja all you want, but Lidstrom was also -4 and finished with just 2 points. His performance was a big let down after his Norris-worthy regular season.

Pavel Datsyuk – 0 goals in 5 games. Injuries were a factor, but you might as well say EVERY player in injured at this stage of the game. Datsyuk has always struggled in the playoffs, and now has 0 goals in the last 3 playoff seasons (21 games!). Datsyuk has only 15 points in 42 playoff games compared to 241 points in 284 regular season games. Sorry, Red Wings fans, but Pavel Datsyuk makes Derek King look like a clutch player.

Dwayne Roloson – Look, the Detroit Red Wings outshot and outplayed the Edmonton Oilers for most of the series. Detroit was certainly not outclassed by any huge stretch, and they didn’t play poorly overall. If you want to point fingers, point them at Dwayne Roloson and his astonishing 92.9SV% in the series. For all of the chances Detroit was generating, Roloson was stopping most of them and keeping his team in the game. The fact that Detroit couldn’t build on their 2-0 lead in Game 6 was thanks to Roloson’s great ability to suck up pucks like a black hole. (Robert Esche ought to take notes) Edmonton took advantage of Detroit’s inability to put up some insurance markers and were able to come back. Sometimes, great goaltending just trumps the best teams’ best laid plans. Detroit should know all about that from past experience.

good team with bad tending and bad leadership got toasted. not only was legacy sub-par (though nto so much terrible) they could, in no way, rely on their back-up, former cup winner, and former starter. if they wanted osgood back so bad, and their starter was sinking, it is odd osgood has 0 minutes played this post season.

all the other teams (even the lossers) at least had a backup OPTION. nashvilles proved to be a killer, burke couldnt save the radically different defending champs, buit played, and even turco was spelled.

now anaheim is trying it too lol.

the only team to protect its sub par goalie so far has been the avs, they have had two advantages, q has defended a sub par goalie for years in the playoffs and is good at it, and they played a worse goalie :)